Preschool: Diversity and Friendship

We finished the letters the week before Christmas so we are working on themes and letter groups for the second half of the year. You are probably aware of the fact that it was Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Monday. So the letters of the week were M L and K. (I know. I can see the shock on your face.)

We did letter activities and activities about diversity and friendship. For our opening activity I thought just playing with Magna-Tiles was the way to go. It's good for spacial reasoning and early geometry skills. Plus, you know, we have them and they're fun!

During circle time we read Peanut Butter and Cupcake.

We got our copy through Imagination Library but if you don't have that program you should for sure get this book. I love it. After we read we played a game about seeing how we were different and the same. Everyone liked this game. I would call out a characteristic and if people matched the characteristic they would stand on the blanket. We did blue eyes, blue jeans, pony tails and if you were 3. They liked to see that they had things in common and things different. 

Other activities for the day included: friendship necklaces, practicing writing our uppercase letters, watching the Sneetches movie while eating our cooperation trail mix. *This activity should have been more fun.* They were going to make trail mix and give it to a friend but instead we just talked about how all the ingredients make for a good snack but together they are better even though they're different. 

We also drove Hot Wheels on the MLK road (painters tape) and identified uppercase and lower case by parking in the designated parking spots I had written out on cardboard. (This one also would have been fun but they just wanted to drive the cars.) I saved the parking lots though I am going to try again with C. 

For our science activity we looked at Brown Eggs and White Eggs and talked about the differences of them. Then we cracked them open to see that inside they were the same. Truthfully we didn't do anything that was specifically Martin Luther King Jr. based. I couldn't find a book I thought was at their skill level and the crafts I could find seemed only meh. I figure they have a lot of years studying him ahead of them at school. So I stuck with the spirit of Dr. King and decided that was a better lesson than a biography anyway. 

So that is what we're up to this week in preschool.